Kratom does appear to be far safer than all illegal and most prescription opioids: a CDC study of some 27,000 overdoses that occurred between 2016 and 2017 found that it was implicated in less than 1 percent of deaths. Given the large number of people who regularly use it and the low number of fatalities, researchers estimate that it is more than 1,000 times less likely to kill than typical prescription opioids.

The herbal supplement can be abused, but given the explosion in opioid deaths, eliminating this safer substitute will almost certainly lead to more deaths.